Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Tourte Milanese - TWD: Baking with Julia

Another puff-pastry creation - this one was a fancy but also kind of rustic meat, cheese, vegetable and egg-filled pie called Tourte Milanese. The chef for this recipe is Michel Richard - I always love seeing those episodes with him and Julia together, as Michel Richard is so animated and funny, and Julia clearly is enjoying herself.I used my own puff pastry for this, and assembled the ingredients - the full pound of puff pastry, softly scrambled eggs (10 of them - yow!) with herbs, roasted red peppers, sauteed spinach, sliced Swiss cheese and sliced ham. Three-quarters of the pastry is rolled out, fitted into the buttered pan (8.5" springform), and then chilled to firm up. The ingredients are layered in as a sort of mirror image, with eggs on top and bottom, spinach, ham, and cheese inside those, and peppers in the middle. Pretty simple to put together, once you get all the prep work done.

Before baking

The remaining dough is fitted on top, and then egg wash applied. You chill the assembled creation for 30-60 minutes, and then bake for an hour and a quarter (I think I went even a little longer), until puffed and golden.

After cooling for a short time, you run a knife around the edge and remove it from the pan. I had a few struggles with this, as seen by the minor flaws on the edges of the unmolded torte, so perhaps this needed more butter on the pan (more butter?!). Despite the imperfections (that's the "rustic" part :-), it was really quite yummy. The tourte is big and would serve a crowd (we ate slices over the course of a week...) This would be a good choice for a brunch, since you can prepare it ahead, and use store-bought puff pastry as well. The slices also have a bit of a "wow" factor with the different colorful layers.